Simple résumé

One column, ordinary section names, no graphics. It is the least fashionable layout in the category and the only one whose text arrives intact at the other end.

What this layout usually means

  • A single column running the full width of the page
  • Section headings in plain words: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills
  • Dates on the same line as the role, written as month and year
  • Contact details as text at the top, not as icons

What happens when a machine reads it

Not an opinion about design. These are the things a text extractor does with a page, and you can watch ours do them to your own file at the bottom of this page.

Nothing structural
Text comes out in the order it was written, which is the order it was meant to be read in. This is the whole advantage, and it is larger than it sounds.
The one thing to get wrong
Renaming the sections. "Where I have made an impact" is a heading a parser files under nothing, and the experience it contains goes with it.

Reads cleanly

This is the format to use. Everything the other layouts add is decoration that a screening system cannot see, paid for in text that it can.

Write one instead

Our builder writes the structure above, exports as PDF, Word or plain text, and shows you what a parser reads back as you type. Free, no account, and the download is not the paywall.

Open the free builder

Or check the one you have

Drop it here and see the text a screening system gets — which sections it finds, which it loses, and what it decides you do for a living. Read in this tab; nothing is uploaded.

Your file is read by code running in this tab. It is never sent anywhere, and we never see it. Open your browser’s network tab and drop it again — you will see no upload.